Would you Ever Avoid a Brand Name with "1st" In It?

[MarkW]

That's not an exact example of what Im working with here, but the question relates to mostly to NAP concerns. I'm afraid that some people might mention the brand using "1st" and some might use "First" and there would be some inconsistencies there.

It's a brand name with potential to be strong and recognizable, and I feel like the right answer is that you should not be choosing the name of your business based upon temporary algorithms on someone else's website. However, I'm an SEO by nature and I'd hate to pick a name that caused me to miss out on some SEO-related value.

Any thoughts?

 

[Margaret Ornsby]

Google's smart enough to understand that 1st and first are the same - try googling "first national" vs "1st national". You'll come up with the same search. It's a bit like St vs Street in the NAP. Google can tell they're the same.

I realise that's not the exact term you're looking at for the name, still it shows the example of the algorithms ability to turn what we type into what we mean.

While I never cease being frustrated by the things the algo's get wrong (Places & maps spam), I never cease to be amazed at how really google gets right.

 

[MarkW]

Google's smart enough to understand that 1st and first are the same - try googling "first national" vs "1st national". You'll come up with the same search. It's a bit like St vs Street in the NAP. Google can tell they're the same.

I realise that's not the exact term you're looking at for the name, still it shows the example of the algorithms ability to turn what we type into what we mean.

While I never cease being frustrated by the things the algo's get wrong (Places & maps spam), I never cease to be amazed at how really google gets right.

OK thanks for your answer. I know that Google has the ability to equate the two, but I'm unsure how much of that ability is applied to identifying citations and brand mentions for ranking purposes.

 

[Margaret Ornsby]

Hi Mark, I'm not sure I understand the issue.
You're in charge of creating citations, yes? So you'd use the company name, whether 1st or first, yes? Any bot that scrapes the citations and makes new ones you don't yet control, they'd copy whatever you created.
Am I still missing something?

 

[MarkW]

You're in charge of creating citations, yes?

I disagree. Sure there are many that I can create and control, but there are a lot of people discussing businesses on the web that are out of my control, especially true with brand mentions vs what you might call citations.

 

[Margaret Ornsby]

Re: Would you Ever Avoid a Brand Name with "1st" In It?

Right - I understand now.

This is a really good question, btw!

I still think you'd be okay, and here's why:
If you google "first national bank Krome Ave Homestead FL" It's a fairly specific search, yes?
The bank is actually branded 1st national bank, it's URL is 1st National Bank of South Florida. Yet in the search results you'll see a mix of "first national bank" and "1st national bank".
If you google just the address or just the phone number, you get the mix of first and 1st
If you do a site search just in facebook for say just the address, google gives you a mix of first and 1st.

I concede this isn't an exhaustive study; I'd love to hear what other local specialists have to say on this too.

---------- Post Merged at 11:20 AM ---------- Previous Post was at 11:19 AM ----------

oops - the forum automagically changed the url to a link. it should say www . 1stnatbank . com